The Old House (15 page)

“She was so lively, wasn't she?” Grandpa observed, not seeming to notice Addie's pain. Still so strong, it was, after all these years, Buddy thought. But how could Mama have stolen Dad; he who hadn't really belonged to Addie. “Always laughing, I remember. Looked a lot like little missy here. What's your name again, child?”

“She's Buddy, Grandpa,” Cassie reminded him.

Grandpa frowned. “Silly name for a pretty little girl,” he said.

Buddy cleared her throat and swiped at her eyes. “It's really Amy Kate, but when I was only about three, Daddy used to call me his little buddy when I went with him in the truck, and then everybody started calling me that.”

Grandpa's fingers touched the talking clock, and it announced the time. “Have we had lunch yet? I seem to be hungry.”

“No, we haven't, but I'll fix it right now,” Cassie assured him. “Somebody's at the door, probably the mailman. Would you get it, Buddy? I'll start dishing up the soup, and I was going to make toasted cheese sandwiches.”

Buddy felt shaky as she obediently headed for the door. Surely they wouldn't make her go back to school now, would they? Even after Bart called back to tell her how seriously injured Dad was? If her brother was coming to get her in only a few days, there couldn't be any compelling reason to return to school.

It was, indeed, the mailman. He extended a handful of letters, and then dug into his pouch for a rather battered manila envelope. “Sorry about this one. Got damaged in the mail, somehow. Came open, looks like. They stuck everything
back into it, I guess, but she'll probably have to run off another copy of it if she sends it out again. Some of the pages are dirty, like they got walked on. Good thing she's got one of those printer things.”

Buddy thanked him and accepted it, only to have it fall apart again, scattering pages all over the hall floor. She set the rest of the mail aside, noticing that the one on top was addressed to Max. His mother, maybe? She got down on her knees to pick up the loose pages and heard Addie come up behind her.

“What on earth's going on?” Addie asked. “Is that one of my manuscripts?”

“Yes. It broke open,” Buddy said, wondering if she should try to sort them out by page numbers or just gather them in a stack for Addie to straighten out. She picked up the next page and hesitated. “This seems to be a letter, not part of the book,” she said, and handed it up to Addie.

Her aunt glanced at the sheet of paper, then for the second time in only a few minutes got white enough that Buddy wondered if she was going to faint. When Addie made a sort of
gurgling sound, Buddy stood up quickly and grabbed Addie's arm, guiding her toward the chair at the telephone table. “Are you all right?” Buddy asked, putting the rest of the mail down. “Shall I get Aunt Cassie?”

Addie's lips moved, but she didn't make any sound at first. Then she thrust the letter into Buddy's hand.

Buddy read it aloud. “‘Dear Miss Ostrom: We are pleased to accept your historical novel,
Winds of Change
, and to offer you the enclosed contract for an advance of . . .'” Buddy's voice trailed off in a little squeak.

“Does it say
ten thousand dollars?”
Addie whispered, brushing her fingertips across her lips.

Buddy wondered as if her own lips were pale, too. “Yes. Ten thousand dollars.”

Addie appeared to collapse inwardly, as she were a tire going flat. “What does the rest of it say?”

Buddy read it silently this time, feeling almost as stunned as Addie looked, then summarized. “They want you to do some revisions. It says they think Rosemary sounds too mature
for a six-year-old. . . . Rosemary's one of the characters?”

“I based her on . . . EllaBelle, when she was six,” Addie breathed. “She talked . . . just like that. Grandpa said she was . . . a little dictionary.”

“Addie? Buddy? What are you doing?”

Cassie sounded cross. “I thought you two would come and at least set the table while I tended the toasted cheese. . . . Why is the mail all over the floor?”

Buddy moistened her lips when it appeared that Addie was too stricken to explain.

“Aunt Addie's just sold one of her books. They want her to make a few changes, something about a little girl who seems too mature for her age.”

Cassie's mouth formed an incredulous O. She, too, needed to sit down, but there was only one chair in the hallway, so she leaned against the wall and clutched at her throat.

Buddy wasn't sure what else to say. She looked at the pages scattered on the floor. “Somebody walked on some of them. They'll have to be done over, won't they?”

Addie was gathering her wits and her breath. “I'll run off another copy, after I've done whatever revisions they're asking for.”

“Are they paying you for this book?” Cassie asked, color returning to her face.

“Yes, of course,” Addie said, sounding a bit short-tempered. “How could I sell it if they didn't pay for it?”

On her knees, trying to sort through the pages, Buddy heard footsteps behind Cassie and looked up to see Gus standing there. His mouth was sagging open.

Addie noticed him and smiled a brittle smile. “You were wrong, Gus. I wasn't wasting my time after all. I was practicing a craft, learning it, getting better at it, and it's finally paying off. They're buying my book.”

“For enough to pay the bills?” Cassie asked breathlessly. “So you can replace the microwave? And the remote control?”

Addie pulled herself together and stood up. “Yes, enough to replace them both. Pick up the whole mess, Buddy, and put it on the dining room table. I'll sort the pages after lunch. I'll take the rest of the mail.”

“Lunch!”
Cassie shrieked, and fled toward the kitchen.

“I turned over the sandwiches,” they heard Grandpa say from the doorway. “That one got a little burned, but I like it that way. I'll take that one.”

Between hearing that Dan had been found alive, even though injured, and that Addie had at long last sold a book for a substantial amount of money, it was doubtful that any of them were aware of whether their sandwiches were scorched or not.

And when the phone rang an hour later, everyone took it for granted that it was Bart calling back. Buddy raced for it.

“Buddy? The doctors said Dad's dehydrated, and he's got a nasty gash on his head that's infected, but they're giving him antibiotics and fluids in IVs. He broke a couple of ribs and some bones in his left hand, but otherwise it's practically a miracle. The cops said they'd have expected anybody who went off that cliff to have been killed, so it really
is
miraculous.”

Buddy remembered her prayers in the long nights since they'd heard from Dad. Her throat
ached as she asked, “How long will he have to be in the hospital? Where are you, anyway?”

“At Willits, in northern California. They think probably only a few days, but I don't want to wait until I can take him home before I come get you. I mean, we don't even have a home now, do we? So I don't know where we'll go, actually, but Dad'll probably help us decide that after he's had something to eat and some rest. He said he kept thinking about those steaks we were going to have when he got home, but for right now the nurse said he'll probably get hot soup and crackers.”

“How come it took so long to find him?” Buddy wanted to know. “How come nobody noticed he'd been in a wreck?”

Bart sounded so close, she could have reached out and touched him, and she wished she could, and Dad, too. “The truck was swept through the railing and down the side of the mountain by a gigantic mud slide. Remember, it had been raining for days? A chunk of the mountain above the road came down, and just swept everything over the edge. It carried the truck and Dad and Rich along with it, and
practically buried them. They went down almost four hundred feet, and nobody could see the wreckage from the road up over their heads.”

Buddy shuddered, imagining how close they'd come to losing their father. “How did you find him, then?”

“Well, I was asking at every place I came to, all along that stretch of road. Several people—a waitress, and a guy at a fuel stop—remembered seeing the truck and Dad and Rich. So I knew they'd gone a certain distance. I saw there had been trouble with the road—it's still only one lane along that stretch because they have to rebuild a section of it—and when I couldn't run down any trace of them beyond that point, I talked to the local sheriff's department and then to the trucking company in Lewiston again. I knew they couldn't have stolen a load of lumber or anything else; there was no place they could have gone in that area. Nobody had even thought of looking through all the debris at the bottom of the cliff. There were rocks in it, big as cars, and trees, tumbled every which way, all
over the top of the mud. Their CB didn't work down there, couldn't get out to reach anybody so far above them. There's a river at the bottom of the canyon, but no roads into that area. The search and rescue people came, and some of them went down on ropes because the canyon was too narrow to check it out with a helicopter. I was standing there on what's left of the highway when they signaled that they'd found the truck, and for a few minutes none of us up there knew whether Dad had survived the wreck or not. Then some more guys went down on ropes, and they got shovels and stuff to dig them out, and brought Dad and Rich up on those metal mesh stretchers.”

Buddy shuddered, imagining what it must have been like to stand there, watching and wondering if Dad was still alive or if he'd died in the wreck, maybe even suffocated in the mud that covered his rig. “It must have been horrible,” she murmured.

“Well, it was some relief when they let us know both Dad and Rich were alive. But they looked awful when they came up over the edge of the canyon. I mean, besides being really
dirty and bloody because they had cuts and scratches, Dad looked half-starved. He said Rich had had a couple of candy bars in a jacket pocket, and Dad had some peanuts. That's all they'd had to eat the whole time. And they'd each had a Thermos of coffee. After that ran out, they didn't have anything to drink. And of course they'd both been several days without shaving, so they looked pretty grim. But Dad knew I was there, and he reached out and squeezed my hand and said my name. And he asked about you.”

So much for all those people who'd insisted he must have abandoned them, Buddy thought, tearing up again. She'd
known
he'd never have done any such thing. “And he's going to be all right, isn't he? He's going to heal back to normal?” she asked.

“They're pretty sure he is. Only it'll take a while.”

Buddy licked her lips, glancing up at the audience that had gathered around her—both aunts and Grandpa. “What will we do until he's better?”

“I haven't figured that out yet. But don't worry,” Bart told her. “At least we'
ll all be together again.”

Cassie made a sound, deep in her throat. “He's hurt, right? He's going to need some time to recuperate. And you don't have a house anymore.”

Addie moved, just a little, as if to stop Cassie from making an offer, but she didn't say anything.

“He could come here,” Cassie said. “Bart could bring him here.”

This time, Addie spoke. “Where are you going to put them? Two more people? Cassie, we don't have the space.”

“Are you still holding a grudge against him for marrying EllaBelle?” Cassie challenged her. “You could move your desk and computer into your bedroom for a few weeks, couldn't you? We could set up a bed in the back bedroom for Dan; there's still the bed that was in there years ago. And there are twin beds in Max's room. He wouldn't mind sharing with Bart for a while.”

Addie's face had flamed bright pink. “I'm not holding a grudge because he married Ellie! For pete's sake, Cassie!”

“
Well, then, Buddy, tell them to come here until he's well enough to go back to work. That way you and Bart could go to school and not get behind.”

Buddy didn't want to go back to school. She'd hoped when Addie came to take her home that she would never have to walk back into Mrs. Hope's classroom with all those strange kids looking at her. But a man just out of the hospital, with very little money, couldn't live in a car.

On the phone, Bart was demanding, “What's going on? What are they saying?”

“Let me talk to him,” Cassie said, and took the receiver out of Buddy's hand and began to lay out her idea for him. When she finished, she smiled and handed it back to Buddy. “He thinks that would probably work,” she said. “Better than coming here and taking you away when you don't have a place to live. If it's only going to be a few days before Dan's released from the hospital, it would make more sense for them both to come here. He's going to talk to Dan and see what he says.”

Dad would probably say, “Yes, thank you,”
Buddy thought. And maybe it would be easier than anything else they could do right away. “What do you think?” she asked her brother, and heard relief in Bart's voice.

“It sounds better than holing up in a motel, when we're short of money already,” he said. “He'll have comp payments until he can work again, but I guess they aren't very much. I'll talk to Dad and call you back, okay?”

“Where are you sleeping now?” Buddy demanded. “Not still in the car, I hope.”

“No, they're letting me take the other bed in Dad's room. Hang in there, Buddy, till I get back to you.”

She felt very, shaky as she hung up the phone. “He's going to talk to Dad,” she said, addressing Cassie.

“Good. Dan's smart enough to do the sensible thing, which is to stay here. He's not going to call back right away, now, so you might as well go back to school, honey.”